Battlefield 6 Developers Report That the Number of Cheaters in the Game Is Growing, But They Are Only Encountered in 4% of Matches
The development team of Battlefield 6 published stats on how their anti-cheat is performing and explained how they calculate the Match Infection Rate (MIR) — the share of matches that include at least one offender.
MIR covers both confirmed cheaters (all of whom were banned) and players flagged as suspicious based on a collection of signals. Those signals come from player reports, gameplay clips on social networks, and other indirect indicators that, taken alone, wouldn’t justify an immediate ban (i.e., they’re part of a wider pattern the team monitors).
Any match that includes a confirmed or suspected cheater is labeled “infected.” The MIR is then simply the number of infected matches divided by total matches played — basic ratio math, e.g., infected / total = MIR.
As Javelin and Battlefield engineers add detection signals and game-integrity analysts tweak the existing ones, the MIR updates automatically. That dynamic approach helps the metric keep pace with shifting offender tactics and shows a more current view of match conditions.
Because MIR is retrospective, it needs time to settle; reports therefore rely on the previous month’s data. For instance, the final MIR for December 31 landed at 2.28%, down from an earlier reported 3.09%.
January began at 2.38% and climbed to 3.60% by the 31st. Two main forces drove that rise. One: the team uncovered and banned six previously “hidden” cheats — programs built to fly under the radar (they don’t cause obvious glitches and pop up rarely in player reports). Two: on January 18, trials started for a faster ban workflow; that rollout finished on January 26, speeding enforcement (i.e., bans hit offenders quicker).
During January the EA Javelin AntiCheat stopped 384,918 attempts to deploy cheats or otherwise interfere with gameplay before they reached matches.
The group still tracks 224 programs, devices, providers, and communities linked to cheating. Of those, 212 (94.64%) are currently experiencing problems such as malfunctions, detection alerts, downtime, or outright shutdowns of their cheat tools — a clear sign the countermeasures are hitting something, though the back-and-forth continues.